A. The Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to high performance computer graphics image computation system architectures and methods of efficiently carrying out computer graphics image computation tasks. More particularly, the present invention is directed to a system and method for computer graphics image computation which utilizes a novel system architecture comprised of a computational processor ring which includes a plurality of closely coupled, parallel connected, asynchronously operated processors having a plurality of interconnecting data paths to a special purpose video processor ring which includes a plurality of synchronously operating video processors which cooperate to rapidly move large amounts of image data from location to location in the computer graphics image computation system.
B. The Background Art
The field of computer graphics is growing rapidly in all segments of modern society, including entertainment, science, industry, and military applications. As the power and availability of digital computing devices increases, the variety of specific applications using computer graphics also increases. The phrase "computer graphics," in sense as used herein, should be understood to include any application in which digital data is generated or manipulated to create a visually perceptible image. For example, computer graphics may involve digitizing an original real image and altering or manipulating the resulting digital data to produce a generated image different in some way from the original real image. In contrast, it may be that the image which is generated and presented to a user never existed previously except as a computer model consisting of data which was modeled, animated, and rendered to produce the final generated images.
In general, and particularly in the case of computer modeled, animated, and rendered images, the number of calculations which must be performed to create even one frame of a high resolution animated sequence far exceeds the capacity of most general purpose computers used, for example, in a business setting. Moreover, in the commercial applications of computer graphics, particularly in the entertainment and mass media industry, the meeting of very tight schedules and close deadlines requires that complex computer graphics sequences be completed very quickly. Meeting such tight schedules and close deadlines is crucial to the success of a commercial endeavor.
In order to produce computer systems capable of producing graphic images within reasonable time periods, suppliers of such systems have manufactured highly specialized hardware just for the purpose of generating computer graphics. Disadvantageously, such specialized hardware is incompatible with other manufacturers' hardware or is unable to emulate other manufacturers' systems or resulting images.
Moreover, the previously available computer systems which were dedicated to performing computer graphics were inflexible and could not be adapted to the particular needs of the user or the task at hand. For example, such dedicated computer graphics hardware may unalterably allocate one quarter of its resources to performing modeling tasks, one half of its resources to animation tasks, and the remaining resources to rendering tasks. Significantly, the needs of the user often do not match such an allocation of system resources. Furthermore, the dedicated hardware used in previously available systems often becomes obsolete soon after its release due to advances in the art.
In view of the drawbacks and disadvantages found in the prior state of the art, it would be an advance in the art to provide a computer system adapted for producing graphic images which is configurable so as to allow the hardware resources to be allocated to different tasks as the need arises. It would be yet another advance in the art to provide a computer graphics image computation system which may be adapted to input and output video information from several different peripheral devices and which can efficiently carry out the tasks of modeling, animating, and rendering of computer graphic images.
It would be a further advance in the art to provide a computer graphics image computation system which allows the images which have been stored or computed to be rapidly distributed to locations within the system or transferred to external video devices. It would also be an advance in the art to provide a computer graphics image computation system which utilizes a standard digital video signal to move image data within the system such as can be readily used by external video devices. It would also be an advance in the art to provide a computer graphics image computation system in which the number of components which can be incorporated therein may be expanded to accommodate the changing needs of the user.